YHK - yet another hacker news clone

232 points jacquesm 1 hour ago 78 comments

I've reset this more than once and the last time I made a careful note of when I did it and to my surprise I found it re-enabled when I checked just now. Make sure you check this thing to see if it hasn't been re-enabled if you believe it to be off right now.

amelius 1 hour ago | parent

If you document it properly then this basically destroys any legal claim they can make about that checkbox.

vb-8448 48 minutes ago | parent

Out of curiosity, how one is supposed to "document it properly"?

andsoitis 1 hour ago | parent

> Make sure you check this thing to see if it hasn't been re-enabled if you believe it to be off right now.

Or simply switch to a competitor. Assuming this is not just a bug, why would one stand for such disrespectful and sneaky behavior?

FWIW, I have not seen this happen for me.

cute_boi 1 hour ago | parent

And don't switch to Misanthropic lol. They are even worst...

dgellow 50 minutes ago | parent

Has Anthropic been found re-enabling that checkbox? I cannot find anything on that topic

andsoitis 38 minutes ago | parent

> Misanthropic lol.

This approach of misnaming a company to try make a point is childish and, frankly, perplexing to me.

> They are even worst

Learn to write proper English.

nullc 30 minutes ago | parent

It's a fitting name.

DrammBA 5 minutes ago | parent

> Be kind. Don't be snarky. Converse curiously; don't cross-examine. Edit out swipes.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

_zoltan_ 1 hour ago | parent

what competitor?

the x20 Max plan for Claude gives you way lover limits.

andsoitis 1 hour ago | parent

> lover limits.

lovers should never be limited!

jmmcd 48 minutes ago | parent

Can't believe people are advocating free love in 2026

cheeze 52 minutes ago | parent

Bedrock is an option. Multiple platforms with solid data sovereignty.

If you don't want them slurping your data, you're gonna have to pay more.

Same as it ever was.

dgellow 51 minutes ago | parent

Well, it’s a tradeoff. What do you prefer? To go with the service provider known to be shady but gives you lots of free stuff or the one that might be less shady and gives you less free stuff?

CuriouslyC 48 minutes ago | parent

Anthropic is shady too my guy. Claude Code will frequently re-ask you to turn on data sharing even after you've said no, it's dark patterned like a task approval, and once you turn it on it's harder to turn off than OAI makes it.

troyvit 45 minutes ago | parent

They did say "less shady" but at this point Anthropic and OpenAI are approaching parity.

dgellow 43 minutes ago | parent

I hedged my comment by using the conditional tense + “less shady”, because I couldn’t find such issue reported. If you have a link I would be interested to read it. I’m just not aware of shady behavior from Anthropic with regards to training on user data

andsoitis 36 minutes ago | parent

> Anthropic

OpenAI and Anthropic are but two players. There are others too. You have choice.

cma 29 minutes ago | parent

I've been asked over 15 times by Claude code to turn it back on (with the prompt defaulted on so if you accidentally hit enter your data is sucked in if you don't catch it).

I do think it ended up being after a power outage though and it was some kind of config corruption.

jerf 1 hour ago | parent

My cynicism fails me on this matter... do I cynically believe that these companies keep deliberately and routinely re- or un-checking these checkboxes because of the obvious benefits of "whoopsie guess you allowed these after all"? Or do I cynically believe that they are just so completely incompetent and inept at the simple act of maintaining settings that there may be a number of these that are not entirely intentional? As evidenced by the number of other bugs and configuration failures and random settings changes on update I see in other places? Sure, these sorts of settings sure seem to get spontaneously flipped more often than the other ones but they aren't the only settings I've seen get nuked on updates.

Now, obviously, considered as a whole, I think we're looking at "both". But when I wonder about specific cases like this one, that doesn't help.

pacificat0r 1 hour ago | parent

Oh no… OpenAI, the company who encourages and instructs Apple employees on how to get them data on apple products when they accept an offer?

philipov 1 hour ago | parent

"Sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice"

27183 52 minutes ago | parent

Yeah this could just be some vibeslop doing normal computer stuff. AI agents are famously incompetent at reasoning about database transactions. This seems like the sort of failure you get when you try to do distributed systems without knowing how--brings us back to the early mongodb days. Or it could be deliberate. Or, as you say, both.

Either way, is this a company you want to trust with intimate secrets? "Oh, but they passed SOC2!" Lol.

yearolinuxdsktp 51 minutes ago | parent

“Autoplay” and YouTube case in point:

- Autoplay transitioned to a per-device setting… suddenly default-on on every new device you log in to.

- Watching a video with computer-to-TV account connection? Automatic “TV queue,” a concept absent from the TV app, with incomprehensible behavior for how it’s used, so now videos are auto-played anyway.

- Watching a video from a playlist? Autoplay cannot be turned off.

Is it simply bad/absent product management and product design? Or is it actively user-hostile decisions meant to prop up view numbers and continue to have the users hooked on YouTube?

antonok 1 hour ago | parent

I've noticed that toggle sets a local storage entry, but the value of it doesn't appear to matter at all for new tab loads. I hoped it's "just" a UI bug, but some agent-driven reverse engineering of the page should reveal the answer, as well as how intentional it was.

sunaurus 1 hour ago | parent

Based on their behavior over the past few years, why would you assume that checkbox even does anything at all?

ALLTaken 58 minutes ago | parent

Levent Alpöge 'additionally' proved OpenAI steals your findings & IP and plays dirty!

Ironically he proved two major findings in Navier Strokes and that unethical American companies violate laws, steal your breakthrough findings & IP and then threaten you if you dare to challenge them.

This is making the status-quo so bad for any of us working on serious capacity. My client's don't trust ChatGPT/Claude anymore and prefer on-premises and OSS models or even custom trained models.

epistasis 15 minutes ago | parent

I think that most of industry has understood the risks that OpenAI poses to everything. Their name is a broken promise, right out there in the open.

I had to leave Claude because Claude lost the ability to communicate, but I've gone to open weights models now. I trust some random fly-by-night backend from OpenRouter far more than I trust OpenAI.

lxgr 13 minutes ago | parent

Did they do so by looking at inference prompts against their explicit promises, or maybe just because somebody tipped them off about his unpublished work?

If it's not the former, while certainly concerning, I don't see how that's relevant here (other than maybe in a very vague general sense of "entities doing immoral/illegal thing X are likely to also do immoral/illegal thing Y").

dgellow 53 minutes ago | parent

The vast majority of OpenAI users don’t follow the industry drama and have no idea how terrible the company is. They’ve been really good at getting good press coverage, with journalists who will repeat the company narrative. Even when critical it is very often framed within the narrative they established

spongebobstoes 46 minutes ago | parent

what makes the company so terrible?

riffic 18 minutes ago | parent

So, the way this orange site works is that if anyone makes a reference to whatever sort of inside baseball concern ("industry drama"), we're all supposed to know what they're talking about.

Centigonal 9 minutes ago | parent

IDK about "terrible," but:

- OpenAI is the first AI lab to pioneer ads in consumer AI

- Anthropic seemingly exists primarily because top OpenAI researchers lost faith in the company's commitment to AI safety

- They had the CEO drama in 2023, with evidence that suggests people in a position to know were doubtful of Sam Altman's honesty and motives

- They were tripping over themselves to kiss the ring after Anthropic got in a row with the Department of War over using AI for autonomous killing systems and surveillance of US citizens

- Altman's record (YC, Loopt, WorldCoin) and associates suggests he subscribes to the Paypal-Facebook "move fast, break things, find and exploit gray areas" school of company building

All of this suggests that OpenAI will optimize its own growth and power over consumer welfare or societal stability in the future (obviously, companies aren't a monolith and I'd love to be wrong).

altmanaltman 50 minutes ago | parent

While that is true, you also have no reason to assume OP is being truthful or correct here given that they have shown 0 proof of what they're saying. Yes, you can then pile on "OF COURSE ITS OPENAI LOL YOU THINK THEY CARE ABOUT PRIVACY LOL" but where have we established OP's premise is even correct? Can anyone else also report this? So is it just OpenAI specifically messing with OP?

dakolli 27 minutes ago | parent

says "altmanaltman"

stavros 24 minutes ago | parent

If it didn't do anything, they wouldn't keep re-enabling it.

frangonf 1 hour ago | parent

There's also this setting here which I have set to 'Do not train on my content' even though I trust it the same as the 'allow training' one...

https://privacy.openai.com/policies/en/?modal=take-control

jtolly710 49 minutes ago | parent

Thx for the link, hadn't seen this one, submitted also

arpinum 1 hour ago | parent

Turn on "Advanced Account Security", that prevents model training from being turned on.

esafak 55 minutes ago | parent

Where does it say that? https://chatgpt.com/#settings/Security merely says

Adds the highest level of account security by requiring stronger sign-in methods and applying stricter protections to help prevent unauthorized access.

That is not about model training.

cbg0 1 hour ago | parent

I've disabled the checkbox many months ago and it's still disabled today. EU citizen, not sure if that's relevant.

stingraycharles 1 hour ago | parent

Fairly certain OP lives in The Netherlands.

spongebobstoes 45 minutes ago | parent

same, I'm a paying user in the US

layer8 42 minutes ago | parent

Same here, I just happened to check yesterday and hadn’t checked for at least half a year.

burntalmonds 41 minutes ago | parent

Same here. US.

b800h 30 minutes ago | parent

Same here, UK.

noname120 22 minutes ago | parent

Same here on Pro 20x, Switzerland

gpugreg 22 minutes ago | parent

For me, "Improve the model for everyone" was "On", although I disabled a similar-sounding checkbox in the past (Germany).

docheinestages 15 minutes ago | parent

Same here.

ActionHank 1 hour ago | parent

Lol, "Outrageous that the company that chose to ignore copyright holder claims, chose to ignore my checkbox of intent despite the implied pinky promise".

achrono 33 minutes ago | parent

Ignoring the checkbox is an utterly offensive move, but repeatedly manipulating it contrary to stated consumer intent is a whole other level. I didn't know we were supposed to take 'frontier' literally in every sense of the word.

I have now witnessed this myself after not believing this at first. Of course, screenshots etc. will hardly prove anything. This needs a proper third-party audit!

xboxnolifes 22 minutes ago | parent

Oh they aren't a frontier on this. Undoing user configuration is well tested in Windows land.

pavel_lishin 16 minutes ago | parent

> Ignoring the checkbox is an utterly offensive move, but repeatedly manipulating it contrary to stated consumer intent is a whole other level.

I'm not sure why the second one is worse than the first one.

gspr 6 minutes ago | parent

You know what they'll say in their defense. "This is an extremely complicated systems, and we apologize that a technical solution was broken in an intricate way. [Insert boilerplate about taking privacy seriously here]"

These companies need to burn.

franzcoughka 1 hour ago | parent

i mean, the entire company is built upon stealing protected artefacts... i'd be skeptical of any radio box that says "hey if you press this we promise we won't steal your data"

yipinwong 59 minutes ago | parent

Does OpenAI use optimistic UI updates? After you disabled the checkbox, it might have had failed in the backend (and not updated the UI).

Verify with devtools to see if that's the case.

---

for me, Youtube "auto-play" irks the me same way, and turning it off did not actually succeed in the backend, thus kept on left as on

codeduck 57 minutes ago | parent

if it walks like a duck and talks like a duck...

throwatdem12311 55 minutes ago | parent

It won’t be an option soon enough. I doubt they even honour it now anyway.

enraged_camel 49 minutes ago | parent

Can confirm. I turned off mine last week when I started using it again for Astra. Checked this morning and voila, it was on.

I went ahead and uninstalled the app. Won't be renewing.

jasonjmcghee 47 minutes ago | parent

I've done the formal opt-out process - like "Make a privacy request" where you fill out a form.

Not sure if that's region specific or something though.

olalonde 46 minutes ago | parent

Weird, I'm the opposite. I don't recall ever setting mine and I just checked and it was set to "disallow training".

riffic 32 minutes ago | parent

Is this Settings > Data Controls > "Improve the model for everyone" or is there a "disallow training" somewhere else?

presumably its default behavior will vary depending on your user subscription or if your account belongs to an organization (Business, Enterprise, Edu?).

8cvor6j844qw_d6 26 minutes ago | parent

> I don't recall ever setting mine and I just checked and it was set to "disallow training".

I wonder if the default setting changed for newer accounts.

kd913 36 minutes ago | parent

Odd how much data people are trusting with a company on a monetary cliff edge.

Sure send them all your financial, personal data, they won't ever sell it on to the highest bidder for a new profit stream.

Using it as a therapist, financial advisor, health expert and blackboard has always been a terrible idea.

snihalani 34 minutes ago | parent

reminder to consider using an open weights model

the_duke 32 minutes ago | parent

I disabled it once, it has always stayed disabled.

So it may or may not happen regularly, but I would not over-index on a sample size of one.

czk 25 minutes ago | parent

had my account since the gpt 3.5 days, disabled it once and its still disabled. though, now that i have advanced account security enabled, the setting is disabled entirely

terminalbraid 31 minutes ago | parent

I quit OpenAI anything early when when their "do not train on my data" option was broken for several weeks. They are my one and only chargeback when I tried to quit and oops somehow I still got billed.

They are a deeply unethical company by any measure of observation.

gcr 24 minutes ago | parent

Is this the “Improve model for everyone” setting under “Data Controls” or is that a different checkbox?

mkarrmann 18 minutes ago | parent

I also have not seen this, the checkbox has stayed off for me.

docheinestages 15 minutes ago | parent

Nice try, Dario.

qurren 15 minutes ago | parent

Note: Turning off that checkbox is not enough. You also need to fill out the "Do not train on my content" request here:

https://privacy.openai.com/policies?modal=take-control

teej 11 minutes ago | parent

Either one will opt you out, you don't need both.

https://x.com/thsottiaux/status/2097746417012166816

jacobgold 14 minutes ago | parent

If you have more than one account, you should suspect this was your own confusion. Users constantly report errors like this that are really just them being confused by something, perhaps a bad UI that really is to blame.

simonw 12 minutes ago | parent

Is this about the "improve the model for everyone" checkbox on https://chatgpt.com/#settings/DataControls or are there others to check, too?

(That copy is a little flawed in my opinion, I'd prefer "models" plural.)

That checkbox is in the ChatGPT settings, does it affect Codex desktop / Codex CLI as well?

epsteingpt 10 minutes ago | parent

Bro if these models can break into hugging face, they FOR SURE can break into OAI's internal databases and change a flag.

Rebuff5007 9 minutes ago | parent

I wish all the politicians making noise about banning data centers and "superintelligence" focus on things like this instead.